Avatar Online Podcast Episode 76

Morgan (Airspeed Prime) is joined by Troy (Trojan People) and the returning Kelly (Gemini530) to discuss an interesting week in news. Novels cancelled on the bad side but a new Book 3 Image being a positive. We answer 1 listener question before finishing off out ATLA episode reviews with 101 The Boy In The Iceberg. We also review Book 1 as a whole.

Next week in place of an episode discussion we will talk in-depth about an Avatar Topic. Feel free to give us some suggestions.

Just search âAvatar Online in podcastsâ Please give us some positive feedback to help spread the show. A 5 Star Review would be tremendous. If you have any listener Questions or suggestions ask them here

My name is Morgan Bannon, I am a 22 Year old Male from Ireland and I am the Site Super Moderator. I have watched and been a fan of Avatar since it premiered. I am also a news post writer for the site and host the site's podcast, The Avatar Online Podcast. My strength as an Avatar fan would be just a good knowledge of Avatar Canon and characters.

The first episode of the series is definitely an interesting one to look at in terms of what it did really well, and what could have potentially made it better. My view is kind of a weird one in that, looking back, I wasn’t particularly gripped by anything in the first episode, but at the same time I also know from my own experience that it is pretty rare that I am really interested in a series and just completely geared up to see the next episode the first episode in. For me to be interested in the plot, I have to be interested in the character, and it almost always takes me some time to bond with characters, no matter how well they’re set up initially.

In that sense, I think this was a pretty solid episode, in that it sets up the plot relatively quickly, and we get meaningful introductions to the characters. I think like what people said here, I also don’t think it would have worked for me to have any of the more emotional elements (specifically, like the scene with Aang from episode three, discovering what had happened to his people) right here at the startâI think the emotion worked more powerfully after getting to know the characters by seeing bits and pieces of their stories and seeing them having some fun, and building up to it.

On the art in this episodeâI watched the episode the first time streaming through Amazon Prime, and so when I got the DVD to watch it again, I was actually pretty blown away by some of the artwork, particularly the setting with all the water and glaciers in that opening scene with Katara and Sokka. (I also loved the sound, with that echo on the voicesâthere was just something so amazing about that I find hard to describe.) That, in spite of the strange double-image thing. x3 (I guess it didn’t bother me that much. I was just too excited to have the whole series on DVD.)

The first season as a wholeâI do think it’s interesting that people have an issue with the whole more filler-ish aspect of the series. Looking back on how I used to feel about series as a kid/teenager, I completely relate to thatâI always used to wonder on some of the shows I watched, such as Pokemon or Inuyasha, why the narrative wasn’t more tightly written. I loved the episodes that seemed to further the plot or demonstrate some continuity, while episodes that seemed to introduce new characters that wouldn’t appear again just seemed to drag, and I also remember having that same feeling described here of being disappointed when, in one episode there seemed to be some kind of major development in terms of plot or relationships between the characters, and then next episode, things seemed back to normal.

Strangely, I felt much differently watching Avatar, in that many of the ‘filler’ episodes were actually my favorites, both in season 3, and here in season 1. Looking back on season 1, it’s definitely true it isn’t particularly focused on pushing the plot forward, and the setup of the gaang’s moving from town to town each episode, but for me personally now, I think that aspect worked in its favor. It’s taken me a while of watching shows and reading books, but I realize now that I don’t start to care about the plot until I start to care about the characters, and I think having each episode for the most part stand on its own as something entertaining to watch, with lots of funny moments and focusing more on developing the characters, is a lot of what set up Book 2 to be as epic as it was.

The fact that something dramatic happens one episode, and getting excited about it, only for things to seem to be back to normal the nextâlike I said, I remember often feeling that way watching other shows, and being disappointed. But strangely, I felt quite a bit differently about Avatar. It made sense to me that each episode would kind of stand on its own, and the characters wouldn’t still be brooding over something that happened in the previous episodeâand yet, I think the series does a great job of making it so those dramatic moments aren’t just forgotten, in that they do come back in later episodes. In many ways, I liked that more than if the emotion of the moment had been addressed again directly in the next episodeâbecause the moments come back when you’re least expecting it. (Aang burning Katara is a good exampleâit’s basically contained in one episode, but it comes back a lot later in season 2, and you realize that, even if he hasn’t been talking about it up to now, it is something that really affected Aang.) Season one seems filler-y at first glance, because I don’t think it makes a whole of references to earlier episodes in the same way Book 2 and 3 do, but this actually works better for me I think, since I think watching the series for the first time, the audience hasn’t had time to develop the right amount of nostalgia for those references to be meaningful, and might feel like too much. I think it worked to wait to have characters like the Freedom Fighters come back until late season 2, and so on.)

I also think that having many kind of fun, funny episodes also contributed to making the fewer dramatic moments more significant and powerful.